Dissertations Upon the Principles and Arrangement of a Harmony of the Gospels (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830. Excerpt: ... If we are right in these positions, the matter of fact, when we proceed to enquire into the fulfilment of the prophecy, ought to bear us out. Let it, therefore, be supposed that the time of the public and personal manifestation of the Messias, by either his own preaching, or that of his predecessor the Baptist, is the time marked out as the point where the first division of the prophecy, the sixty and nine weeks, composed of seven weeks, and of sixty and two weeks, (which I take it for granted are equivalent to four hundred and eighty-three solar, or Julian years, ) was always intended to expire. This point, we have seen, answers to A. U. 779. B. C. 26. the twelfth of Tiberius Caesar medium, or the thirteenth ineuntem. On this principle, the four hundred and eighty-three years, having from which it was actually to proceed. The former of these was the time of the personal manifestation of the Messias; the latter the time of his death. For this reason, perhaps, these two periods are specified in direct conjunction; because the scope and design of the prophecy are, as it were, summed up in them both together; the gradual preparation for the Christian scheme, up to a certain point, and its final execution after it, are thereby exhibited in their natural order of relation, and are so much the more clearly expressed. The period which intervened between them, and was taken up by the personal agency of the Messias, was interposed from the necessity of the case, and was equally indispensable to either. The preparation for the Christian scheme could not be considered complete, until the Messias had actually appeared; much less could its final execution begin, until he had both died and risen again for mankind. His personal appearance, then, would be the close of the..